A Few Miles Further

Let me tell you all a story.

Once upon a time I met this amazing girl. It was my freshman year of high school and if you didn't know me then, let me paint you a picture. At the age of nine my parents divorced and my mother moved into kind of a bad part of town. Me being the shy anti social boy I was I opted to always stay in the house eating Dan Dee cheese curls watching Batman the animated series. It sounded good at the time but little did I know that it would result in me plumping up and forever being the "fat kid" from sixth grade onward. Now here I was, in ninth grade, the first year of high school. It felt great except the fact that I was still ridiculed on almost a daily basis and while I kept a slightly cool exterior I was, on the inside, withering away with every insult uttered.

But I digress. So there I was and it was the last day of school before Christmas break. Two weeks of nothing but sleeping in and playing the original Halo. It was going to be bliss, and as a young apathetic high schooler, that's all I cared about. So for the last day before break the school decided to show a little movie for us so we wouldn't have to do any work. The movie was Shrek and I couldn’t care less. For me this was a time to goof off and hang with my friends. As students piled into the small viewing room, I sat next to a group of friends and made idle chit chat when all of a sudden she walked in. My God you should have seen her. Long brown curly locks, beautiful amber eyes. It was actually difficult to think straight when I saw her. All I wanted to do was talk to her, and that’s exactly what I did. After I got her attention by lightly stepping on her hand while the movie played. What do you want? I was young and stupid. But it worked.

From that point on she became a paradise to me. We started dating but, being young and stupid I chose to play Halo instead of hanging out with her. Strike one. So a couple months into the relationship we broke up. Normally I would have shrugged it off and said something like “I don’t need her!”. But unfortunately for me not having her in my life just made me realize a very important truth: For the first time in my life I was in love.

From there we remained friends throughout high school. She dated a close friend of mine which, while it hurt to see them together, it did offer me the chance to be the bigger man and let them be happy. And that’s what I did. After a year they broke up and that’s when I started seeing her less frequently. So we jump now to my senior year of high school. I was still fat but people seemed like me for me (finally) and even if they didn’t I had developed a nice “I don’t give a crap what you think of me” attitude. And then one day, just as God was about to start laughing at my torment, she walked in again. Stunning as ever. Just seeing her made me want to do great things, and lucky for me we had a few classes together. Our friendship became strong once again and over time, somehow she saw something in me that no one else did, and we started dating again.

I was in heaven I mean, I couldn’t believe that she would give me another chance and by now my love for her was so strong it was driving me crazy. I thought to myself, “I can’t lose her again. I have to be the perfect boyfriend.” But my version of the perfect boyfriend was anything but, and I chose to be the same old me again (playing games, lazing around not giving a damn) and it led to strike two. So once again she called it quits and this time it was like an atom bomb dropping on my life. Have you ever seen the episode of South Park where Wendy breaks up with Stan and Stan gets really depressed and stays in his room all the time and then goes goth? Well that was me (except for the goth part).

At this point in the story I graduate and leave the high school forever. Now she was a grade behind me so she still had a year to go. Needless to say I hardly ever saw her.

Then in 2006 I met a girl named Molly. I never thought I would ever love anyone as much as I loved the girl of my dreams whom I lost. But Molly made me believe again. Until she cheated on me and destroyed my heart and soul. Now I’m not trying to bash her here. She has actually since gone on to lead a great life. She met a guy whom she really adores and who really adores her and they have since married. She’s living with him now, I believe she’s a nurse (I only say that because that’s what she was going to college for when we dated) and she has a little black cat. I hear she’s doing great and I’m happy for her.

I bring her up because during our relationship I made the mistake of telling her about this girl from high school. Well she didn’t like that one bit and she forbade me from talking with this girl any longer. I fought this tooth and nail for months. I thought, “No way. We are just friends and we don’t even see each other a lot as it is and since I’m 100% faithful and always have been I see no harm in remaining her friend.” But eventually the battle got to be too much for me and I gave in. Now this is a moment in my life I am not proud of in the slightest. I Myspace messaged this girl and told her I was done with her. She wasn’t happy about it, and we ended things a little badly.

Well a little while later guess what? Molly and I broke up. It was a liberating thing and I then dedicated my life to focusing on me and making me happy again. It was nice. 

So life seemed to be looking up again, until I lost my job. To this day I have never been so terrified. Looking for a job on a daily basis and getting nothing was something that nauseated me. Little did I know that things were about to get a lot worse. That friend of mine that she dated in high school? He was my best friend since we were ten years old and shortly after I lost my job he passed away from cancer. It was devastating and to this day I miss him greatly. I decided to blog about him on my myspace page (back when I had one) and it helped me get some things off my chest and say goodbye to him in another way.

So I get an interview, ace it, get the job, and leave. As I’m pulling out my phone rings and I see I have a voice mail. I put the phone to my ear and out comes the sweetest voice. A voice I haven’t heard for about three years at this point. It’s the girl and she wants to meet at Denny’s to catch up. That night we met, and the second I saw her all those feelings came rushing back to me. It was like we had never split at all. We arrived at Denny’s at ten o’clock at night and didn’t leave until eight the next morning. We talked into the night about everything that had happened with us over the past three years and to this day it is a milestone in the cannon of my life.

So this girl. She’s unbelievable I mean really, she doesn’t just light up a room. The lights freakin’ explode when she enters. After we rekindled our friendship we kind of spent every waking moment together. Well not EVERY waking moment but eventually it did get to that point haha. That was one hell of a summer. I remember one night in particular we were hanging out at her parents house which wasn’t far from the Denny’s we initially met at so we decided to walk there being as it was a warm summer night. We had yet another great meal and conversation there and then began the trek back to her parent’s house. On the way back we saw a meteor shower. No joke it was the night of a meteor shower, first one I had ever seen. We looked up into the night sky and she said “make a wish.” I wished that we would be together again. Not just as young lovers or even best friends turned lovers but as something stronger. As soul mates who travelled far and wide to find each other and the seas were kind enough to grant us a meeting. A couple weeks later we were boyfriend and girlfriend once again.

Now here we are, almost two years into our relationship and I couldn’t ask for more. I have found my one true love. People search their whole lives for something like this and never find it. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. Oh and guess what? She’s just as beautiful as ever. When I wake up in the morning and turn and see her face, eyes closed sleeping peacefully into the morning it makes me rejoice. I am talking of course about my wonderful love Alecia Zhenee Waddell. The girl who let me step on her hand in ninth grade and still gave me the time of day. The girl who let me have two strikes and at one point completely throw the game gave me another chance. She saw something in my that perhaps I couldn’t even see in myself.

So in conclusion to this rather lengthy blog I just want to say that Alecia Waddell is my girlfriend. My partner. My soul mate. I couldn’t ask for someone more wonderful, beautiful, funny and kind. Even now while she sits on our couch watching funny videos on her phone she reminds me just how lucky I am.

Well, I’m going to call this one finished. I’m going to go tell her how much I love her.